Wilson blocks Japan's racial equality proposal at Paris (1919), and Tokugawa Yoshinobu surrenders Edo Castle to Imperial forces (1868). Born on this day: Andrew Wiles, Ferdinand Lassalle and John I. Died: Enver Hoxha, Kurt Vonnegut and Ahmed Ben Bella.
30 events, 57 births and 57 deaths on this date.
At the Paris Peace Conference, Woodrow Wilson ruled that Japan's proposal to add racial equality to the League of Nations covenant needed unanimous backing, and so it failed. The decision left a lasting grievance in Japan and showed how far the peace talks were shaped by Western powers.
Harris & Ewing, photographer · Public domainThe last Tokugawa shogun handed Edo Castle to the forces of the Emperor, bringing the Tokugawa shogunate to an end. The surrender closed a period of rule by warrior dictators that had lasted for more than six centuries.
The Dutch prince William and his wife Mary took the English, Scottish and Irish thrones together after the Glorious Revolution had forced James II into exile. Their shared coronation confirmed a partnership that would define the age.
Anastasius was a palace official who, after the death of Emperor Zeno, was chosen to rule from Constantinople. He is remembered for reforming the currency and tax system, and for building up the imperial treasury.
Adeodatus II took office as bishop of Rome following the death of Pope Vitalian. He spent much of his brief papacy repairing churches and opposing monothelitism, a doctrine that held Christ had only one will.
Public domain
Mount Tambora, on the Indonesian island of Sumbawa, blew out up to 150 cubic kilometres of material, the largest eruption on record. The debris it threw into the sky cooled the whole planet, so the following summer was remembered as unusually cold.
Jialiang Gao (peace-on-earth.org) · CC BY-SA 3.0
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Andrew Wiles is an English mathematician at Oxford, best known for proving Fermat's Last Theorem, a problem that had resisted mathematicians for more than three centuries. His 1994 breakthrough, fixed with his former student Richard Taylor, was published in 1995.
"copyright C. J. Mozzochi, Princeton N.J" · Attribution
Born in Breslau, Lassalle founded the General German Workers' Association in 1863, the first independent workers' party in Germany. He argued for state-backed producers' co-operatives won through universal suffrage, a doctrine still known as Lassalleanism.
Philipp Graff · Public domain
John I ruled Portugal for 48 years, the longest reign of any Portuguese monarch. He secured the country's independence from Castile in a succession war and founded the Aviz dynasty, whose reign saw Portugal's early overseas expansion begin.
anonymous · Public domain
Enver Hoxha led Albania for four decades, first as wartime partisan leader and then as a hard-line communist ruler who isolated the country and banned religion. He died in 1985 and was succeeded by Ramiz Alia.
Petrit Kumi · Public domain
Vonnegut was an American novelist whose darkly funny satire, especially Slaughterhouse-Five, drew on his survival of the Dresden bombing as a prisoner of war. That 1969 novel about the firebombing made him famous and remains his best-known book.
Bernard Gotfryd / Adam Cuerden · Public domain
Ahmed Ben Bella was Algeria's first president, elected after independence from France in 1962 and overthrown in 1965. He had earlier led the National Liberation Front during the war of independence, and had also played football.
République Algérienne · Public domain
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